Maggie Jackson's Odyssey

Maggie would have said she was contented if not happy in her marriage, as Colin and she settled into companionable old age together. She had not reckoned on her geriatric pop philosopher husband having one last rush of testosterone, resulting in a brief affair with one of his PhD students. Plunged into shock and rage when she discovered text messages from his lover on his phone, she took his credit card from his wallet and set off into the night from their affluent home in Twickenham. Leaving behind her bewildered and irate daughter and two little grandchildren, she embarked on a spontaneous odyssey across Europe, visiting their old haunts and brooding on her sense of betrayal and loss. But Maggie's libido was not quite as exhausted as she believed, and she discovered that she too was capable of an extra-marital fling when the opportunity arose. This is the joyful secret she hugs to herself, not even confiding in her best friend Barbara.Returning home, she insisted on Colin moving out. After a year apart when they played a titillating game of seduction and rejection, lockdown that forced them back together again.These are the reminiscences that preoccupy her on Colin's 71st birthday, as she recalls the turbulent emotions and mood swings of the last year, still unsure if she has forgiven him or wants to stay in their marriage. In a day punctuated by their conversations and the tensions between them, she does her best to play the good wife, planning a Zoom party with the family, speaking to her mother in a nursing home with dementia, preparing a special birthday dinner a deux, and trying to suppress the jibes and sarcastic comments that threaten to derail all her efforts. Then a surprise revelation from Colin jolts her into a new reality, and she realises that perhaps she hardly knows the man she has been with for nearly all her adult life. But then, Colin doesn't really know her either. How well do couples ever know each other?Maggie Jackson's Odyssey offers a reflection on love and marriage, betrayal and rage, mortality and the ageing process, in a story that is both comic and poignant, exploring the passions that simmer and flare out beneath the domesticated facade of an ageing woman's life. :